Agroecology

Agroecology is one of several fields that emerged as a response to the environmental and social impacts of industrialized agriculture (also termed conventional agriculture). Industrial agriculture's focus on maximizing yields and profits has resulted in negative impacts on social and ecological systems around the world. Many of the practices associated with industrial agriculture (e.g., soil tillage; excessive use of water, pesticides, and fertilizers) have led to increasing degradation of the long-term productivity and health of agricultural land. The term agroecology began appearing more frequently in the sustainable agriculture literature in the 1970s through contributions of academics based mostly in the United States and Latin America. Some of the most influential among these people were Stephen Gliessman, from the University of California, Santa Cruz; Miguel Altieri from the University of California, Berkeley; John Vandermeer, from the University of Michigan; and Charles Francis, from the University of Nebraska. However, in what is widely recognized as the first textbook in the field, Gliessman traces the first forms of agroecology to the German geographer K. Klages, who published an article on crop ecology in 1928. This was followed by the first actual use of the term agroecology by the Czechoslovakian agronomist Basil Bensin in 1930, as part of a proposal to the then International Institute of Agriculture in Rome for an agroecologically based research agenda for agriculture. However, it was not until the past 25 years that agroecology has become a vibrant field of research and practice, with increasing importance in policy, academic, and field applications.

Early definitions of agroecology focused on the application of ecological concepts and principles to the design and management of sustainable agroecosystems. This initial conception of agroecology remains the most widely known, but a recent key publication by a group of renowned agroecologists has redefined and expanded the term as an interdisciplinary field that explicitly addresses social, economic, and ecological factors associated with food systems. This new definition by Francis and colleagues (2003) defines agroecology as “the integrative study of the ecology of the entire food system, encompassing ecological, economic and social dimensions” (p. 100). In Francis and colleagues’ article and in subsequent contributions on the theoretical basis of the field, agroecologists have strongly shifted the focus from a farm-based approach to addressing the entirety of the food system, including production, processing, transportation, financial intermediation, marketing, and consumption.